The Binding of Izuku
by Dewyn
Summary: At the age of five, a presumably Quirkless Midoriya Izuku is broken out of the prison cell he calls a basement. At the age of five, the gifted Todoroki Shouto runs away from a broken home. At the age of five, two boys take their first steps into a darker world. Rating subject to change.
1. An Entrance

**I don't really know what I'm doing with this.**

 **I didn't want to go too far into things with just one chapter, hence its brevity. Thought I'd see if this was a good idea first. It's kind of a mess.**

* * *

Cold concrete like bones in winter, hard and unrelenting beneath his agony.

The scorching sting of wood on flesh, burning raw fire on stripped skin.

Empty eyes, a shell of empathy locked forever behind their abyss.

How long had it been like this? He couldn't remember. Maybe a month. Maybe a year. He hadn't kept count. Somewhere _before_ , he'd seen it on the television, an old film: a man scratching his sentence into the walls of his cell, spelling out the lost days of his life in grim etching. Midoriya Izuku, on the other hand – had he had a life to begin with?

Such philosophic intricacies lost themselves in his undeveloped brain, the buzz of unlinked synapses.

He was five years old – at least, he thought he was. He knew his Quirk was supposed to have manifested when he was four. He knew his mother had tried her damndest to get it out of him. He knew he'd failed to exhibit any signs of a Quirk. He knew she meant well when she used her own to pull over a well-worn wooden spoon and beat him until he cried. Maybe if he hurt enough he'd finally draw out his own latent power.

Right? Right.

Even so, as he sat there, legs sprawled across the uneven concrete, shackled by one slender – no, emaciated - ankle to an iron bedframe that anchored him to his personal acropolis, he couldn't help but sob. Quietly, of course; if his mother heard him, he'd have much more to cry about.

He'd not seen his father in person in a very long time, since before that fateful appointment that had been the undoing of the world he'd known. Midoriya Hisashi was, to Izuku's recollection, a small, cheerful man, a wild mop of dark brown hair atop glinting spectacles and cheeks like overripe apples, wrinkled from the smile that came so readily to his lips. Some days, he'd pray, and pray, and pray, hoping his father would show up out of nowhere, out of the blue, dropping out of the sky like the nanny in an English film he'd watched before his mother had driven his baseball bat through the screen, and that he'd take Izuku away, far away, and they'd live happily ever after.

No such thing happened. As far as Midoriya Hisashi knew, he was supporting his lovely wife and son back home in Japan by working tirelessly on the west coast of the United States, putting his talents to use in the film industry. Izuku hadn't been allowed to watch the films his father worked on.

He _had_ been allowed to see the man a few times on the video phone, fleeting glimpses of hope and happiness in a dismal prison, and his mother had carefully mended his bruises with makeup, his cuts with bandages and claims that he was a rambunctious child who was always getting into trouble (Hisashi would smile, his eyes twinkling, and Izuku would always cry a little; he couldn't help it, even though his mother would glare and gesture over the screen). She brought him out of the basement on those days, and on occasion, he'd even be allowed to have a little treat, as if the call had interrupted a happy afternoon of mother-son dessert parties.

The little chocolate parfait he'd had last time had been wonderful, and his mother's smile had seemed genuine, but that same spoon that could whip up such a tasty treat could also deliver a nasty beating, and he'd gone to bed sore.

His mother made movies, too. Izuku knew this because he was the prop.

* * *

Todoroki Shouto did not like Todoroki Enji.

The moment Enji had discovered that Shouto, the youngest in a series of four children (one of whom had disappeared around the time Shouto was born, never to be seen again), had the perfect combination of his parents' Quirks, the training had begun. Rigorous sparring unfit for a child Shouto's age. Forcing him to use his Quirk until he very nearly passed out from the strain of it. Unrelenting demand for _better, better, better_ delivered by mantra each sunrise and hammered home by sunset.

His mother, Todoroki Rei, was the opposite of her husband (Shouto dared not think of Enji as _his father_ but rather as _that man_ ).

Todoroki Fuyumi and Todoroki Natsuo could only watch as their parents' relationship fell apart at seams held together by glue and tape, a feeble façade standing in for stitching that had come undone long ago. Shouto, born after the fact and at the center of the decay, knew no differently, but grew to resent their biological father all the same.

He was not kind to their mother, particularly when their youngest was involved. For a man with a fire Quirk, it was almost impressive how cold he could be, and how quickly he could shift from glacier to inferno, in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart.

He never _beat_ Shouto per se, but he had hit Rei more than once, and he was far too rough with the boy in their sparring, going so far as to use a Quirk he'd had three decades to develop to coerce a child who'd barely a tenth of one to match its power.

Then one day there was an extra serving of breakfast and the youngest Todoroki was nowhere to be found.

* * *

Watashi ga kita. _I am here._

Except he wasn't, and no matter how hard Izuku believed, his favourite hero wouldn't come.

 _Really, what does All Might care about one stupid Quirkless kid locked in a basement?_ asked a nasty little voice in his head, the one he knew was seeing things with an eye far older than he, but he cried harder and it shut up.

People didn't ordinarily visit anymore; after he'd been locked down here and told to wait like a good boy, there had been a _lot_ of visitors, and he'd heard wails from upstairs, but all his mother had told him was that their friends and family had been very sad that he did not have a Quirk.

He

 _almost_

believed it.

Then one night the window disintegrated and a severed hand fell into the basement.

* * *

At five years old, Todoroki Shouto found himself trapped in the slimy grip of the sewer sludge of east Tokyo.

For a child who allowed himself no indulgence in fantasy, this scenario was, in a word, unforeseen. No matter how he struggled, the sludge held tight, slick slime curling around small fingers as he clawed at it.

"A child, in the sewers…what are you doing down here, little boy?" The voice was everywhere and nowhere, synthesized from gas bubbles slipping through the sludge and popping at the surface, and Shouto froze.

 _It talks!?_ Considering it had covered his mouth, he wasn't exactly capable of answering its question, and he continued to scrabble fruitlessly, aimlessly, confused and frightened. "Oh, yes. This is perfect," came the hiss, and the slime forced itself against his mouth, his nostrils, searching for a point of entry. "I promise this won't hurt, boy…not a bit."

"I promise this _will._ "

The echo of a second voice gave the sludge-monster pause, and in the instant it hesitated, a spiral of blue flame streaked down the sewer corridor, boring a hole straight through Shouto's captor. It howled in pain, frantic bubbling through viscous brown-green slop, and its grip loosened, letting the boy slip through to the stone walkway below him a moment before a _wave_ of azure fire washed over it, completely torching it – or so Shouto thought, until he realized that the ambient temperature in the corridor had more than halved, and he could see little puffs of vapor every time he breathed. Shivering, he conjured a small fire in one hand, holding it close for warmth as he turned to survey what remained of his assailant.

Shriveled, brown, congealed. The borehole from the first attack was crisp with frost. Had it really been fire…?

"So," came that same drawl from the darkness, and Shouto looked up, unsure if he should be frightened or relieved. Blue flared some ten meters away, and by its light, he could see the speaker, a teenager, some ten years older than he, with startling disfigurements across his face and forearms – shriveled, dead-looking flesh, surgical suturing separating it from healthy skin. The damage was symmetrical across both sides of his body, down to the stitching around the bags beneath his eyes, and Shouto couldn't help but wonder if he'd done it himself. "What _is_ a kid doing in the sewers?"

* * *

Izuku screamed.

Of course he screamed. The boy looking in through the now-empty window frame at him was doing so through another severed hand that clutched his face like a mask.

With uncanny agility, he slipped snakelike through the hole, landing catlike on his feet and grinning wolflike at the terrified Izuku. "Hey, it's alright," he said, in a voice like cloth over dead leaves, and Izuku stared back, wide-eyed.

"Need to work on your bedside manner," came a grunt from the window, and the boy waved a hand (well, three hands; another pair of severed hands clutched his arm).

"Speak for yourself." Then, to Izuku: "Hold still. I don't think you'd like having your hand join my collection."

"What are you – ?"

The boy slipped off the leather sheaths that covered each of his fingers on one hand, then touched all five fingers to the cuff around Izuku's ankle; immediately, the metal crumbled, falling into a pile of sticky ash as the attached chain dropped to the floor with a thud. Standing, the other paced to the wall, touching it at intervals and disintegrating just enough of the concrete to form footholds and handholds up to the window, climbing up as he went. Slipping back outside, he called back: "Get dressed. We're leaving."

"But Mom said – "

"Is that really your mother?" the boy with the hand on his face cut in, and Izuku stopped midsentence, mouth hanging open. "Matsui's Quirk lets him sense suffering. Tell him what you told me, Matsui."

"Basement was screaming."

Izuku stared at the man's hood. The hood remained dark and impassive.

"Like I said." The boy's tone didn't invite argument. "Get dressed and let's go."

* * *

"Dabi," Shouto repeated, tasting the name. "…What kind of Quirk was that?"

The teenager – Dabi, he'd called himself; no last name, not even a real first name – threw his head back and laughed.

"Ahh, my bastard father's Quirk mixed with my mother's, but not how either of them were expecting. It's called Frost-Fire. Can you guess what it does?"

Shouto watched the cold flames lick their way up the other's arm.

"It seems to behave a lot like fire," he observed, speaking slowly. "But it…freezes things?"

"Close." Almost lazily, Dabi gave a vague gesture with one hand, sending tongues of frost-fire snaking along the walls, coating them in a sheen of dry ice. "Ever left ice cream in the freezer too long?"

"I've never had ice cream."

The other paused.

"Guess we'll have to get you some," Dabi chuckled, after a moment. "I wasn't allowed to have any either when I was your age. First thing I did when I had my own money was buy some."

Shouto grunted. A smirk crept across Dabi's face.

"Your Quirk's fire, isn't it?" he prompted, when Shouto didn't speak.

"No."

"Then what was that earlier?"

Shouto shook his head.

"…So what's your Quirk, then?" he tried again.

Without warning, the boy lashed out with his right arm, at the wall next to him, and before Dabi could even blink, the next six meters of tunnel had been entirely frozen over.

"…Impressive. So your Quirk is ice." Perhaps his eyes had deceived him when he'd seen the boy conjure scarlet fire to warm himself…

Shouto grunted.

"You're not a talker, are you?"

Grunt.

"Me neither. I guess that means I can stop talking now."

Another grunt.

Dabi grunted back.

* * *

Sirens. Epileptic flashes of red and blue painting the night above the shadow of the fence-line.

"I imagine that was that thing you call a mother finding out her test subject was gone," Shigaraki Tomura drawled. He'd introduced both himself and the giant of a man walking mute beside them, and Izuku had hesitantly told the pair his name in turn.

"Don't call her a – don't call her a _thing_!" Izuku shrilled, tears welling up in wide green eyes, and Shigaraki shrugged one shoulder.

"I guess I've just never liked parents."

"How do you know so much about me, anyway?"

"Eat the screams," Matsui mumbled.

"He means he can learn about suffering by…eating it or something. I'm not exactly sure. There's a guy where we're going who knows way more about it than I do."

Izuku didn't respond right away. For whatever reason, being around these two _calmed_ him, and he breathed out, trying to straighten his jumbled thoughts.

He'd loved his mother dearly, had looked forward to seeing her each day, as any healthy child would…but for the past year…he couldn't pretend he'd been happy, locked in that basement.

Izuku pushed the thoughts away; he'd just wanted out of that basement. There was a boy close to his own age, so these strangers couldn't be all bad, right? Maybe his mother would miss him, but she'd understand.

"Here." Shigaraki and Matsui both stopped, and Izuku nearly bumped into them. With a massive effort, Matsui leaned down and moved aside a round metal plate that he recognized as the cover to a manhole; the man's hulking shadow forced its way through as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and Shigaraki followed, not even looking back at Izuku.

Alone in the night air, the child took a deep breath and put his foot on the top rung of a ladder to another life.


	2. Haven

"Where'd you get those injuries? It's like your arms and legs are just big bruises."

"Spoon," Matsui grunted, before Izuku could respond, and the boy hung his head. Ashamed.

"Huh. I guess your Quirk didn't help you much with that, did it?" Shigaraki reached over, awkwardly, and patted Izuku on the back in an attempt at comforting him, managing not to touch all five fingerpads to Izuku's plain green t-shirt. "…What is it, anyway?"

"What is what?"

"Your Quirk, dummy."

"Oh, um…"

They were going to be very disappointed indeed when they found out the kid they'd rescued was Quirkless.

Just then, however, the end of the sewer tunnel flared with yellow light – a streetlamp, pouring in through a manhole – and _something_ scuttled down the ladder, all legs and scales and claws and teeth, turning to barrel towards them at high speed; Izuku picked up an overwhelming, surging _force_ of emotion that hit him like a shot, and he was actually thrown back with the impact of it, stumbling to regain his balance before falling to his knees.

"Heteromorph." Shigaraki spoke quickly, certainly, his voice no longer cocky and drawling but sharp, serious, older. "Looks like scales. How are we gonna handle this one?"

His vision washed scarlet. Ragged teeth tearing through soft flesh. A woman's screams dying to gurgles. The metallic taste of blood as a forked tongue lapped at the soft bubble of the hole in her throat.

Izuku vomited. Empty liquid bile spattered across the slick stone.

Matsui, too, shifted uncomfortably, but stayed standing, withdrawing from an inner jacket pocket a heavy handgun. Shigaraki, between them, tensed, ready to spring out of harm's way at any moment, but he wasn't fast enough, and nor was Matsui – in less than two seconds, it was upon them, leaping for Shigaraki's throat – there was a bang, the bullet flattened and struck the floor with a resounding _ping_ – and he raised an arm to protect himself, the jaws clasping instead around one of the graying, decayed hands that clutched tight to his limbs like some grisly perversion of a hero costume; he grabbed at its throat, but the decay of his Quirk only turned scales to ash, and he scrambled to brush it away to touch the flesh beneath, but the thing yanked the hand off of Shigaraki's arm and turned to rip off the one still attached at the end of it –

" _No!"_

He didn't know what he was feeling.

He didn't know what he was _doing._

He didn't understand a damn thing that was going on, but Midoriya Izuku stood, rising on shaky legs with the sweep of a small arm to stare down the monster with a look in his eyes, on his face, written over his whole body, that sent chills down Matsui's spine.

Were five-year-olds capable of displaying bloodlust?

With a resounding _bang_ , the creature (for, Shigaraki felt, it no longer deserved to be called _human_ ) loosed its grip, tumbling backwards off of the boy, and for a moment, it actually hesitated, swiveling its head back and forth between the three of them before making Izuku its next target, lunging for him; the other two shouted, trying to intercept, but Izuku – hell, was it even Izuku in there at this point? – just _glared_ , staring back at it with those hellfire eyes of his, and held up one hand, palm flat, fingers together: _stop_ , the gesture said, and the foul head full of foul teeth let out a foul shriek before something invisible tore into its jaw and ripped it off the hinges, a gush of blood bursting out of its throat a moment later as its larynx ruptured.

It barely had time to blink before Izuku turned his palm sideways and flicked his wrist, delivering a solid chop to the air in front of his nose, and like clockwork, _something_ mute, invisible, but utterly, coldly tangible screamed through its body and split it in half, iron scales and all.

The silence that followed was the loudest any of them had ever heard, right before Izuku fell to his knees, burst into tears, and cried himself into unconsciousness.

The last thing he saw before his vision went dark was a sea of gore.

* * *

"…Holy shit."

"Mm?" Dabi hadn't spoken in some time, and his tone was enough to break stoic Shouto's silence.

"Matsui! Shigarakkun! What the hell happened?" Even in the darkness, Shouto could see two figures further down the tunnel, emerging into the intersection, one small and lithe, the other large and decidedly lumpy and both covered in some blackish goo.

"Don't call me that," spat a boy not much older than Shouto himself, only with one hell of a villain costume already in the works. "What does it look like happened?"

"No need to be so hostile," Dabi chuckled, ruffling the boy's dirty white hair. "Seriously, you two, you smell terrible." The teenager snapped his fingers, and the cold azure light of his frost-fire filled the tunnel as it wreathed around his hand, illuminating something that made both he and Shouto stop dead. "Holy shit," he said, again.

"Yeah. We got attacked by something that might've been a heteromorph at some point. Midoriya here was all stammers and stutters until it showed up, then the kid turns into the fuckin' _Exorcist_ and blows it up by waving at it."

"Language, Shigarakkun," Dabi yawned. "You're not old enough to be using those words yet."

"They've been coming out of your mouth since you were my age!" Shigaraki shot back, but Shouto cut in, pointing at Izuku.

"Who is that?"

"Midoriya," Matsui got out, as if that answered the question.

"Matsui picked up some long-term suffering from a house about a mile west. We went to check it out and it was this kid chained in his basement. Who are you, anyway?" Shigaraki asked, looking over Shouto.

"Found him being attacked by that sludge-shit we've been having trouble with for a while now," Dabi shrugged. "He doesn't talk much. I like him. Cool Quirk, too. Doesn't seem to wanna go home, so we just started walking."

Shouto raised an eyebrow under Shigaraki's calculating glare. After a moment, he nodded, satisfied, and turned away. "Seems tough enough. You didn't kill the sludge, did you?"

"No." Dabi let out a long sigh as the four of them set off in the same direction, down a slope in the tunnel, Matsui still carrying the unconscious, blood-soaked Izuku. "Freezing doesn't really do anything to him. A fire Quirk would be handy right about now, but the bastards with those seem to think being a hero is their divine duty or whatever. Then most of them fuck up, fall through and end up working in a bakery and using their Quirks to torch crème brûlée."

"And the ones that make it think they're too good to deal with the little things," Shouto interjected, to the surprise of the other three; they stared at him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead, expression impassive, and Dabi just shrugged a shoulder.

"See? Told you. I like him."

* * *

Izuku woke up flat on his back.

His entire body ached, but that was nothing new; stretching, he scrunched his eyes shut, not wanting to open them yet, knowing he'd see the concrete ceiling overhead, waiting for his mother's footsteps down the basement stairs; he'd had a very strange dream, and the ending hadn't exactly been bad, but it had certainly not been a pleasant one. Still, he'd felt _free_ , and he wanted to cling to that feeling for as long as he could.

Eventually, however, he pushed himself to a sitting position, and quite suddenly, he realized that it very much had not been a dream. The ceiling overhead was greenish stone and far too high, and the room he found himself in was long, with a row of beds against each wall and a patchwork curtain between each bed. Izuku's was clean, but across the aisle, the sheets were stained with something congealed and yellowish.

He didn't want to know what it was.

The bed was too high off the ground for his feet to touch the floor, so after a moment, he grit his teeth, squeezed his eyes tight and dropped, feeling a sick swoop in his stomach for a split second before his shoes clunked against the solid ground and he straightened, brushing himself off.

"Hello?"

His voice, small in the dim hospital wing, seemed to fall short, like he'd tossed a ball with his scrawny kid arms, dropping in a severe arc not a couple of meters from him.

"You."

Izuku jumped.

The speaker was, as far as he could tell, another five-year-old, straight hair in two tones falling haphazardly over his eyes, a curious even split down the middle between white and dark red.

The color reminded him of the blood he'd seen, felt, _tasted_. He felt sick.

"You were unconscious when they brought you in." It wasn't a question, just a statement, and Izuku added "defensive" to the current cocktail of emotions coursing through him, alongside "terrified", "relieved" and "nauseated".

"Yeah, what – what about it?"

Shrug. "Just making sure."

Izuku could tell there was more behind this boy's dull eyes, but when he strained his senses, trying to pick up on it, it was like running headlong into a wall of solid ice.

"They said you killed a monster," the boy went on, oblivious.

"I…I don't know what I did." He looked down at his feet, ashamed, but felt no judgement from the other, who simply crossed his arms and leaned against the bedframe behind him.

"…What's your Quirk?" the boy tried again, but he'd struck a sensitive spot, and Izuku's head shot back up.

"I don't have one! I'm Quirkless, okay!?"

Zero reaction to his outburst, not even a flinch. "You don't have to yell. My name's Shouto."

"…Sorry. Mine's Midoriya. Midoriya Izuku. You don't have a family name?"

"It isn't my name." Shouto didn't seem keen on elaborating, and Izuku didn't push the subject.

"Oh, cool, you two are awake."

"I was never asleep," Shouto pointed out, calmly. The newcomer rolled his eyes, and Izuku, glancing up at him, recoiled at the sight of his face.

"I said you were awake. Is that untrue?" the teenager countered, before turning to Izuku, a lazy grin on his lips. "Ahh. But Midoriya seems to be feeling better."

"Who are – who're you?" Izuku blurted out, and he was met with a dip of the head, the stranger pushing a mess of black hair out of his face.

"My apologies. I'm Dabi. You were unconscious when we met, Matsui carried you back. Good kill, I heard about what you did."

Izuku's gaze shifted back to the ground. "I didn't _do_ anything," he mumbled.

Dabi paused, mouth open to speak, but before he could collect his thoughts, Shigaraki strolled into the room, thumbs in his pockets and the severed hands nowhere to be found. "Hey! Midoriya's awake. Awesome. Guess we can show you two around now."

 _Show us…around?_

"Where are we?" Izuku asked, scratching at his cheek, and Shigaraki spread his arms, a sweeping gesture that did nothing to make the room any more significant.

"It's where you go when the hero you need just doesn't come."

"We're vigilantes," Dabi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But we tend to pick up a lot of stray kids. At least, the ones who don't get swept up by villains."

"A sewer is a strange place to live," Shouto pointed out, master of the obvious that he was, and Shigaraki gave his hands a little shake to emphasize his point.

"But that's the cool part! It's like a secret base, yeah?" The sharp, precocious tactician Izuku had seen earlier was gone, replaced by…just another kid.

"Both Shigarakkun and I grew up here." Dabi seemed to have taken it upon himself to explain things in a more coherent fashion than an eight-year-old could. "I was a runaway. Shigarakkun was abandoned. A couple others were rescued like Midoriya."

"You take other kids away from their moms?" Izuku's lip quivered, and he nearly shouted: "That makes you just as bad as villains!"

The other three stared at him for a moment, then Dabi spoke.

"If a kid doesn't want to go, really doesn't want to go, then we're not going to make them," he explained, slowly. "It seems you came quite willingly. From what Shigarakkun told us, you didn't even question your rescue. Yet you still seem quite attached to your mother."

Mouthing like a fish out of water.

At length, Izuku closed his lips and stared at his shoes again; Shouto frowned, and after a moment, Dabi leaned forward to ruffle his hair, much like he'd done with Shouto: an affectionate big-brother gesture. "We'll work it out, don't worry. …Hey, don't cry, now!"

Shigaraki led the way into a narrow hallway which, judging from the gouges all around the walls, had been carved out from an even smaller corridor, possibly a pipeline. A brief walk in the dark later, they emerged out into what seemed to be an atrium, lit by yellow lamplight that stood in stark contrast to the sterile fluorescence of the hospital wing. The lines in the stone brick underfoot were worn away down the center by many pairs of feet, travelling the unmarked paths over many years, but along the edges of the room, the bricks still stood in sharp contrast from one another, all rough lines and harsh shapes and disconnects and Izuku looked away, trying to drink in the sight.

It wasn't the home he'd dreamed of, but like Shigaraki had said, it was like a secret base, and to five-year-old Izuku, this was _highly_ appealing. It put every blanket fort he'd ever made to shame, and then some.

Shouto viewed things a little more practically. An escape route there. What was likely a dining hall across the atrium. A path to what he could only assume from the volume of foot traffic were the sleeping quarters. Things he regretted knowing because they came from the traditional Japanese stories his father had told him, back in those precious few days before his Quirk had manifested.

Still, he was five, and on the inside, he was just a little thrilled by it all.

"Kids have their own sleeping quarters. We might need a stepstool for Midoriya, though," Dabi added.

"Why?" Shouto.

"He's a little too short to get in the bed by himself just yet. And you can just freeze your way up, can't you?"

Shouto grunted. Dabi smirked. Izuku pouted. Shigaraki snorted.

"Are these the new recruits?" came a lazy drawl from their right, and all four of them turned as one to be met with a lazy, half-lidded glare under a mat of unkempt black bangs.

"Ah. Aizawa-sensei." Dabi gave a quick bow, as did Shigaraki, though in the latter's case, the gesture was too quick, almost like an afterthought. Unsure of what to do, Izuku copied the teenager, and Shouto followed suit, though he kept his eyes on the man. "Yes. Midoriya Izuku and…Shouto."

"Just Shouto?"

"Just Shouto," the boy himself confirmed, staring the stranger down, and after a moment of returning the glare, Aizawa gave a wolfish grin, nodding his approval before turning to Izuku.

"Sir!" Izuku shouted, a little too quickly, and the grin slipped off Aizawa's face like sap, replaced with a raised eyebrow.

"If you give in to authority that quickly, I can't see you becoming one of us anytime soon." Glancing away, Aizawa yawned, covering his mouth with a hand, then regarded the boy with bleary eyes. "It's important to respect some sort of structure, but never be afraid to question that structure, especially when it's only just been presented to you. Understand?"

"Y-yes, sir."

A sigh. "Good enough for now. Did you encounter any villains?"

"Two. Shouto was under attack by a villain at the time of encounter. Midoriya's group also encountered a villain, but it was neutralized." Dabi spoke calmly, quickly, as if reading off of a report, and Aizawa nodded once.

"Quirk?"

"Heteromorph. Reptilian." Shigaraki spoke up, dutiful and concise – whoever Aizawa was, he was clearly of some rank. "Matsui and I were unable to harm it."

"But you got away."

"We did, thanks to Midoriya here."

Izuku withered under the mixture of praise and scrutiny, and Aizawa leaned down, gently placing one finger under Izuku's chin and tilting his head back to meet the other's eyes. "What are your Quirks?" he asked, addressing the pair of them directly.

"I'm, uh, I'm Quirkless."

"Like hell you are!" Shigaraki blurted out, and Aizawa whipped his head around, but he didn't back down. "Aizawa-sensei, Midoriya's the reason we're all alive right now. I don't know _what_ he did, or what his Quirk is, but he tore that villain into pieces by waving his hand around."

"…Hm. Then I'll keep an eye on him. Unidentified Quirk." Satisfied, Aizawa nodded curtly, then straightened, shifting his gaze to Shouto, who stared right back, eyes empty, before stomping one foot and freezing the ground under their feet solid; immediately, Aizawa's hair stood on end, and from what Izuku could see, his eyes had opened all the way, burning with a red hue that sent chills down the boy's spine.

The ice stopped.

With a sigh, Aizawa let his hair fall once more, and Shouto took a step back, showing a flicker of fear for the first time since any of them had met him.

"Quirk…ice. Simple, but powerful in the right hands. Work on your control. You already have quite a bit of power for a child your age, but uncontrolled power is destructive and dangerous." Stepping away, Aizawa swept his gaze over the four of them one last time before he gave a lazy half-salute and, without another word, strode off towards the front of the atrium, where a heavy steel double-door marked the divide between the sewers and whatever this place was.

"…That's Aizawa-sensei for you. He only says what he feels needs to be said. Nothing more, nothing less." Dabi shrugged, then glanced down at the other three. "Tell you what. We'll save the tour for tomorrow. You two are probably tired as hell, I'll just show you to the boys' rooms."

* * *

That night (or at least night according to the glowing numbers on the clock beside him), Izuku lay in his new-old bed, the foot of which faced the foot of Shouto's, and watched the bare bulb flicker on its wiry string.

"…Shouto?" he dared to ask before he flinched. Maybe Shouto was asleep. Maybe he'd just woken him -

"Mm." There was no sleep in his voice – he'd been very much awake.

Sitting up a little, Izuku watched the other boy lay there for a moment, still and silent; the unmistakable reflection of dim golden light told Izuku that Shouto's eyes were still open, glassy, watching the ceiling. If it hadn't been for an occasional blink, he might have passed for dead.

"…Why did you run away from home?"

There wasn't a response. Another minute passed in silence.

Izuku opened his mouth to apologize, but Shouto's voice stopped him.

"What home?"

Neither of them had an answer for that.

After a moment, Shouto spoke again. "What did they rescue you from?"

"I didn't need to be rescued!" Izuku said, a little too loudly, but Shouto was already on it.

"I didn't ask if you thought you needed to. I asked what."

Silence, but for the trickle of water somewhere behind a wall and the faint hum of a generator.

"Home," he said, at length.

"It isn't a home if you have to be rescued from it."

"…I don' wanna talk about this anymore."

"Then don't. But it still happened. Goodnight."

Izuku didn't sleep for a very long time afterward.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading.**


	3. Chronology

**Yo. Sorry for the delay. Got wrapped up writing _Phoenix_ and had writer's block on this for a while.**

* * *

"Hit me."

Izuku lunged.

Izuku missed.

Without taking his hands from his pockets, Aizawa tripped the boy and caught him with the carbon-alloy scarf he wore bundled around his neck and shoulders like a steel bandage. "You're doing the exact same thing every time. I understand that you are a child, but that also means now is the best time to develop the reflexes and thought processes you'll need."

It had been a month since Izuku and Shouto had been taken in by what Dabi had explained to them was a vigilante group – or, as Izuku saw it, illegal heroes, but no less noble.

Shouto was less enthused. "It just means you do what you want when you want. The only thing that sets you apart from villains is that you don't always act for yourselves," he'd said, and Aizawa had given him a very curious look for a few seconds before turning back to Izuku.

" _Do you think I can be a vidge…vidgal…"_

" _Vigilante."_

" _Yeah! That. Do you think I can be one without a Quirk…?"_

" _Hmm." Aizawa stroked at his goatee for a moment, regarding the child before him. He'd been there three days, and already, he'd become very wrapped up in the idea of being a hero, whether or not that was through the proper channels._ Shame _, he'd thought_. If only this kid had been born into a different life…he'd probably make for one hell of a hero. But as it stands… _"Frankly, it's unlikely." Izuku's face fell, but Aizawa went on: "However, my Quirk does absolutely nothing for me in terms of enhancing my own abilities, so it is possible for you to train to my level of physical ability with enough time." Always matter-of-fact was Aizawa, and Shouto perked up, listening. "Still, I have the ability to level the playing field, whereas you would have to rely much more heavily on support items and your wits. If you think you can do that, perhaps you can operate as one of us, and I will allow you to train with the other recruits."_

" _Awesome!" – and the smile on his little face was real. "But…what about Shouto-kun?"_

" _Don't bring me into this."_

" _Don't sulk," Aizawa tossed back, lazily. "If you have a rational reason for not wanting to train, I'd be glad to hear it."_

And that was when he'd said it.

Still, a month later, Shouto had begrudgingly agreed to train alongside Izuku; Shigaraki had joked that he was probably just tired of cleaning, but Izuku could sense something from within the boy he'd spent the past month with, a shift in him; the emotion was painful, and dull, but there was a _drive_ in Shouto that hadn't been there when they'd met.

Just thinking about it, Izuku felt a prickle of determination in his own chest, and when Aizawa instructed him to attack once more, he kicked off the thick carpet just a little harder than he had before and launched himself at his mentor's shins, thinking he was going much faster than he was – but of course he wasn't, and Aizawa caught him halfway.

"You were faster that time. But not nearly fast enough." Pausing, he looked over Izuku and Shouto, then a smirk crept across his lips. "Tell you what. Both of you attack me at once. We'll see what happens then. Sound fair?"

"No!" Izuku blurted out.

"Why's that?"

"Two on one isn't fair!"

Aizawa sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I've faced worse odds. Besides, and I'm sure you two know this – " _or at least one of you does,_ he added silently, glancing at Shouto " – the world isn't a fair place. One day you'll be the ones getting attacked two-on-one. So come on. There's no rational reason to stand around during training. Give me everything you've got!"

This time, both Shouto and Izuku surged forward, Shouto deflecting a grab from Aizawa by tossing a kick skyward and skating sideways out of range on a sheet of ice; feeding off of the determination he could feel _radiating_ from his friend (they were friends, right?), Izuku was able to crank his speed up a notch, fast enough for him to dodge a soft blow aimed his way and feint right before driving his shoulder into Aizawa's kneecap. Catlike, their mentor rolled with the hit, performing a sort of diagonal half-cartwheel that landed him upright, but Shouto's ice struck him from the other side, and Aizawa flinched from the cold -

In that instant, Izuku seized on the opportunity to rush down the older man…and then his speed vanished in midstride, and he stumbled, rolling across the carpet to land facedown in the dust – Aizawa stared him down, eyes glowing red.

"Ouch."

"Looks like you have a Quirk after all." Much more gently than Izuku could have anticipated, Aizawa crossed the room and helped him to his feet, regarding him curiously. "You've been getting faster and hitting harder this entire time, but when both of you attacked at once, the increase was…notable."

There was something in Aizawa's expression, his tone, that Izuku couldn't exactly place, but that was vaguely familiar – comforting, even.

"Shouldn't you be saying something like 'it's only logical' about now? That Izuku is just getting stronger from training?" Shouto cut in. Aizawa glanced up, but for once, he didn't scowl.

"Did you know I was once told my Quirk was unsuitable for hero work?"

 _No._ Neither of the boys had. They shook their heads.

"My parents were not particularly fond of me. I was once told that my Quirk only served to drag others down to my level."

"But that's not true, Aizawa-sensei!" Izuku blurted out. "Your Quirk takes away the bad guys' Quirks so they can't hurt people with them!"

"If you wanna think about it that way, they were never on your level in the first place," Shouto put in, and for once, Aizawa Shouta allowed himself a little smile.

"Thank you. I am glad you have such faith in me. But for a long time, I took their words to heart. I did not try in school. I became apathetic."

"Apa…huh?"

"Apathetic, Midoriya. I had no energy for life. No interest."

Shouto squinted. _Why is he telling us this?_

As if he'd read the heterochrome's mind, however, Aizawa went on: "I didn't meet anyone who would encourage me to work with what I had until years later. That man was the first person to tell me what I _could_ do with my Quirk, instead of what I couldn't. So, even if Midoriya's Quirk is something small…I would rather we focus on what he can do with it."

He didn't bring up that he'd seen the aftermath of Izuku's first manifestation himself, after the two rescues had been put to bed.

He didn't bring up that whatever Quirk Izuku had was, if Shigaraki and Matsui were to be believed, _far_ from something small.

There was one thing that Aizawa Shouta _did_ do, however – upon returning to his office after training, he scrawled down yet another observation on Izuku's file. When he'd finished, he stowed the paper away in its manila folder, locked away in one of the filing cabinets lining the walls.

He had a feeling he'd just taken a step closer to figuring out just _what_ the boy's Quirk was.

* * *

A year to the day had passed since Izuku and Shouto had made their way down into the sewer depths, and the anniversary of their rescue was celebrated like a birthday.

"Congrats on surviving this long," Dabi commended them, and he was only half-joking – life with the vigilantes was not as simple as holing up in their bunker and becoming self-sufficient. No, there were always villains to contend with, and new recruits learned this the hard way.

Even though they were kids, Izuku and Shouto had been allowed out on the occasional patrol – villains had a nasty habit of escaping through the sewers – and twice more had they been placed in situations where Izuku's Quirk had manifested in new and unexpected ways.

Most of the villains they encountered were low-ranked and no more than common street thugs, but on occasion, one with a powerful Quirk or a clever mind would show up, and it was on those occasions that Izuku had suddenly displayed powers that vanished the moment they'd dropped the restrained villain off at the police station.

The first time, they'd been up against a villain with the ability to shatter inanimate objects and control the fragments they left behind – not exactly a complex Quirk, but they'd encountered him at a beach-turned-junkyard one night, and it hadn't been long before Shigaraki, Izuku and a heavyset man with a hole in each palm had been overwhelmed by jagged metal shards.

Their accompaniment's Quirk, Hookshot, was able to snag two fragments out of the air at a time, allowing Shigaraki to safely use his Decay on them, but every time it seemed they were safe, the villain would manage to scrounge up another appliance, and sirens started to blare around the third washing machine.

 _Fear._ Both sides felt it – the vigilantes for their lives, the villain for his freedom – and caught in the middle was six-year-old Izuku, sand on his battered, secondhand sneakers and tears sparkling in his emerald eyes.

Little Izuku stepped forward and the villain started to scream. He didn't resist as the other two tied him up, and only when he'd been dropped off at the back door of the police station had he fallen silent.

Shigaraki watched Izuku out of the corner of his eye all the way back to their sewer stronghold.

The second time, they'd been up against a small-time villain with a fire Quirk, and Dabi grinned lazily as, with one swipe of his arms after another, his frost-fire dispelled the villain's flames, over and over again. Eventually, the other man – a narrow, skinny thing with an extra finger on each hand and mottled, grimy skin – had let out a shriek of frustration, and the next thing either Dabi or the vigilante who'd come with them (a masked man with a katana, who watched in silence as Dabi toyed with their target) knew, there went little Izuku again, hurtling toward the burning man with his body awash in a pale red glow, screaming his child's fury out for the world to hear.

 _Rage._

His six-year-old's fist used the villain's body to smash a crater into the concrete wall.

They'd had a hard time calming Izuku down after that.

Shouto, on the other hand, had been alarmingly consistent with his Quirk, using it to immobilize villains in a single, dominating move: his signature right stomp, which sent up a lightning-fast and so-far-unstoppable wave of solid ice, its glistening surface reflecting the dim torch- and lamplight of the sewer tunnels.

The heterochrome never once let a shred of emotion show on his face.

Dabi bit his lip and said nothing.

* * *

Three years had passed since two boys had found what they thought to be freedom in the confinement of the Tokyo sewers.

"Midoriya."

"Ah. Aizawa-sensei."

"I want to discuss your Quirk."

Izuku, taller now, but still very much a child, stared up at the lanky form of Aizawa, as disheveled and unkempt as he'd always been; another line or two had appeared on his face since they'd met, the bags under his eyes were darker, he was a little _grayer_ , but Aizawa Shouta still gave off that same cold authority he'd worn like his tattered scarf of a capture weapon since the day Izuku had met him.

"Oh! What about it?" Izuku quipped back, immediately; he'd always been the first to follow orders, and a quick study.

"I'd like to look into training it," came the reply, a dull drawl, and Izuku blinked, innocently.

"Um, why? If you don't mind me asking, sensei."

A stale sigh, one of Aizawa's trademarks. "Because, as it stands, it's clear you have one, and it's obviously extremely powerful. Every single time you've been on a patrol that encountered a villain, you've used one of a few powers.

"First. The night we brought you in, you displayed a form of telekinesis that, to put it bluntly, butchered the villain attacking you, a notorious murderer by the name of Tsuchinoko. So far, no patrol reports have recorded a repeat of this incident.

"Second. On one of your early missions, the villain fighting against you fell under some sort of memetic influence that, according to Shigaraki, mimicked intense fear. Every minor criminal your patrols have pursued since has fallen under this effect.

"Third. The villains that choose fight over flight have met with some kind of enhancer Quirk that multiplies your physical strength and speed by an unspecified amount, beyond the limits of the average adult body. You've also taken hits no child should have been able to withstand in this state, but it appears that you will also disobey direct orders, choosing instead to engage in hand-to-hand combat over a tactical approach or retreat."

Izuku stared at his shoes, eyes already brimming with tears. "Sorry…"

"Apologize all you want, but that won't change the situation at hand," reprimanded the older man, arms crossed over his signature plain black vee-neck. "Now that it's clear you have a Quirk of some sort, you need to work on controlling it, particularly that last aspect. As it stands, you've been using it quite wantonly, and even if you're not a legal or licensed hero, discipline is still vital to successful operation as a vigilante. Remember, we're not just up against villains – heroes and the police are obligated to hunt us as well."

"…Okay." He tried not to let them slip, he really did, but a few tears splashed down onto the cobblestone floor of the atrium, trickled down into the mossy cracks between the rock, and Aizawa let out another sigh, this one with a hint more compassion.

"Midoriya," he said, kneeling before Izuku and placing a hand on the boy's shoulder, "you've done well so far outside of your Quirk's…inconsistencies. Remember, you are still a child. You have plenty of room to grow."

"I know, I just…sometimes I wonder…what would my mom think, if she saw all this? If she met you guys?"

The fleeting softness in Aizawa Shouta's eyes – the gruff vulnerability of one unused to expressing themselves – hardened in a heartbeat. He'd heard stories from Shigaraki, Matsui, and Izuku himself, and from what he'd deduced, the only thing stopping Midoriya Inko from becoming a villain herself (or, hell, even a hero, but not one to respect – one forever doomed to a triple digit hero rank) was her Quirk.

"I hope we never find out," he told the boy, and he meant it.

* * *

"You're an adult now," eight-year-old Todoroki Shouto (or, to everyone around him, "just Shouto") told Dabi.

"So?" the other shot back, coolly – it was a part of the dynamic that had grown between them over three years, a brotherly bond sung through words unspoken.

"Doesn't that mean something to you?" Shouto jerked the fishing rod, but the only thing he'd caught was the wrapper to a bag of crisps, and he tossed it into the garbage pile.

A shrug that caused the metal rings holding his skin together to gleam in the narrow ray of sunlight filtering in through the grate overhead. "Not really. It's an arbitrary number if you're already breaking the law."

"Hm."

Dabi gave his own fishing rod a deft flick, and from the depths of the storage pool emerged a fish, slimy and thrashing, milky skin completely covering its numerous eye sockets, pale flesh writhing with a dozen tentacles each the length of Shouto's pinky finger. Rolling his eyes, the vigilante pointed at it with two fingers, and a stream of blue-white fire completely engulfed the fish; it let out a strange squeal, like a deflating balloon.

It was tossed onto the pile with the rest of the aberrations they'd fished up. Dabi slipped another worm onto the hook.

"Why do we kill them?" Shouto asked, studying the weathered tip of his own fishing rod – nothing more than a stick that had been fitted with a spool of fishing line, used by what could have been a dozen boys before him.

"Blunt as ever, I see. We don't want them getting out into the wild with the rest of the lovely, perfect fish, do we?" The young man next to Shouto spat on the ground, away from the youth, and when he spoke again, he'd dropped the barbs from his voice in favour of a calmer honesty. "Fish, villains. We take them out for the same reasons. Think about it."

"I've _been_ thinking about it. They're ugly, but I don't think that's a good reason to kill them." The rod twitched on its own this time, and Shouto reeled in a long, fat, and distinctly unpleasant creature like an eel, only its mouth tore down to its pelvic fins in a bloody gash lined with jagged teeth, white like serrated snowdrops. It was met with a spear of ice through the face and tossed aside, left to die on the cold stone. "But I think I get what you mean."

"Do you?"

"Mm. They're dangerous to the other fish, aren't they? Only, villains can change. So we lock them up instead."

There was a weight behind Shouto's words that no eight-year-old should have been able to put to voice.

If he was honest, the more Shouto talked, the more Dabi was reminded of his own childhood, his own parents; hell, he'd even had two siblings, though he'd never had a missing older brother. Here, now, this weight, these words –

"Was your father a pro hero, Shouto?" he chanced asking, but Shouto didn't respond.

Silence. Another fish attached itself to Dabi's line, something closer to a bundle of leeches than a fish, and even he couldn't resist a shudder as it withered to a dried brown husk, slick mucosa coat diminishing to an unpleasant, sticky residue.

"Mine was," he went on, with a sigh. "But he didn't think my Quirk was worth much. Claimed it was just worse fire." Clasping the fishing rod with his knees, Dabi stuck his left arm out, firing off a jet of frost-fire at the wall; after a moment, he stopped, and as Shouto watched, the concrete crumbled to bits.

"Won't that weaken the structure of the sewer?" he asked, only to be met with a careless half-shrug and a laugh.

"Who gives a shit?" Both fishing rods bent at the tip, and Shouto and Dabi reeled in their lines together, only to be met with a sludge-green fish that split in the middle like a tree trunk and directed both of its two distinctly humanoid heads to the separate hooks. "Ah, damnit. Betcha that one swallowed the bait whole. Fucker. You wanna do the honours?"

Wordlessly, Shouto raised his right hand, and a shard of ice the size of an artillery shell pinned the fish to the opposite wall, ripping it off their lines. Dabi's hook remained attached, but Shouto's broke off, leaving him with an empty, hanging line; both of them stared at it for a moment, then Dabi reached over with surprising gentleness, deftly tying another hook onto the string.

"Feel like that was a metaphor for something, but I dunno what," the vigilante quipped, and Shouto grunted.

Dabi grunted back, feeling the corners of his lips twitch up in the beginnings of a smile.

* * *

"Hey, Shouto-kun?"

"Mm?"

Izuku couldn't really remember when they'd started having these nightly talks, but he'd always remember watching the bare yellow lightbulb, flickering dimly as it swayed from the stone ceiling, listening to the words Shouto spoke through his silences.

"Where'd you go today?"

"Fishing."

A beat, but the other boy didn't elaborate. Izuku expected this; Shouto really wasn't one to elaborate unless asked to. "Catch anything?"

"Yes."

"…Like what?"

"Fish," Shouto deadpanned.

"What kind of fish?"

"Mutant."

"What did you do with 'em?" he prodded, trying his best to get more than a few words out of Shouto, but as usual, he was unsuccessful.

"We killed them."

"Why?"

"They're dangerous to normal fish." _Five words!_ Izuku marveled, smiling a little.

"Why?" he pressed, hoping for more. He wasn't disappointed.

"Mating with a normal fish would make more mutant fish out in the wild."

Izuku counted, then grinned: _Twelve!_ The most he could remember was sixteen, though he couldn't actually recall what that sentence had _been._

Without prompt, however, Shouto spoke again.

"Dabi said the fish are like villains, and we were hunting them down for the same reasons."

 _Seventeen,_ Izuku thought, _a new record,_ but something had just occurred to him that he found very funny. "Is that our job now?" he asked, starting to giggle. "Are we the Fish Hunters Brigade?"

"No," Shouto responded, missing entirely the fact that it was a joke. "I just wanted to be somewhere quiet and Dabi suggested we go fishing. It's too loud here sometimes."

Izuku placed a finger on his chin. "I like it. I like being able to feel everyone around me, you know?"

"No. I do not know that feeling."

"I didn't – that wasn't the kind of question you answer!" – but Izuku wasn't really mad, and Shouto could tell. He shrugged in his bed, though unless Izuku was sitting up, he wouldn't see it.

"Do you still think about your family, Midoriya?" Shouto asked, quietly.

"I told you before, you can call me Izuku."

"I prefer using family names."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" the shorter boy shrilled. Shouto actually sat up a little to look at him, but by the dim light, he couldn't read Izuku's expression.

"How so?"

"You won't use your own family name."

Small fists clenched.

"There's a reason for that. Besides, you still think of your mother as your mother."

"Yeah, so?" Izuku shot back.

"Nothing. That is why I call you Midoriya. You are still a Midoriya." Shouto let his hands relax, laying his head back down on the misshapen pillow he'd been using for the past three years, cotton and cloth that had moulded itself around his head.

"What else am I gonna be?"

"Yourself. Izuku."

For once, Izuku was the one who didn't respond.

* * *

They were twelve years old, and it rained.

"It's good to be out of that musty old sewer sometimes," Izuku admitted, stretching.

"It's just as musty out here in the rain," Shouto replied mildly, and the other boy twirled his umbrella, watching droplets fly off in every direction as they walked along the smoothly-paved blacktop path, carving their way through the park.

"But the air's fresh." He stared up, peering out from under the forest-green canvas at an unrelenting iron sky, and Shouto noted that Izuku's eyes were brimming with tears.

He'd always been a crier, unafraid to show emotion and vulnerability - a stark contrast to Shouto's poker face, an expression as hard and unchanging as their personal acropolis. On occasion, when they thought he couldn't hear them, Shouto would hear people wonder if he felt emotions at all, and he'd clench his jaw so hard Izuku would warn him about cracking his teeth.

" _It's okay, Shouto-kun. I know you feel things, even if you don't show it!" Izuku declared, more confident than Shouto had seen him in a long time._

" _How do you know?"_

" _I just…feel it. Aizawa-sensei suggested it might have something to do with my Quirk. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately…"_

"Have you decided on a name for your Quirk yet?" Shouto cut into his own thoughts, shutting out the memory.

"Oh! Um, yeah. Empath!" – and the heterochrome frowned, shooting Izuku a sidelong glance.

"Empath? Isn't that just understanding others' feelings?"

"Well, yeah, but after some research into the patrols I've been on, I've drawn a few parallels…"

"I see you've been studying your vocabulary."

"Basically," Izuku went on, too excited to be talking Quirks to notice Shouto's half-teasing, "every time I've been on a patrol that's run into a villain, something's happened based on how the villain was feeling! The minor ones are always scared of being caught, so they end up succumbing to that fear…which is kinda sad, when you think about it."

"Please don't start crying again," Shouto sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I wasn't going to!" Izuku retorted, but he was still smiling. "Anyway, then you get the ones who are career criminals, even if they're small-time, and those are usually the ones who fight back. I guess my Quirk just lets me turn their own feelings against them, but I think it does a little more than that, 'cause right now, even though you look the same as you always do, I can feel that you're happy I'm figuring this out, aren't you?"

A shrug. Izuku chuckled.

"Anyway," he went on, and Shouto held his hand out in the rain from under his own umbrella – black, with a sun motif emblazoned in white across the center – feeling the drops on his skin; as Izuku watched, fascinated, a fine coat of rime built up over Shouto's fingers, forming an icy sheen. A moment later, he withdrew the hand, studying it just a moment before touching the fingers of his left to the ice on his right. Izuku still wasn't sure exactly why Shouto could only use ice on the right side of his body, but the one time he'd asked, he'd been quite literally met with a wall of ice as the other boy threw up every shield he could around himself and his bed. "Have you ever thought about leaving?"

The mood shifted in a heartbeat.

"Why would I leave?" Shouto asked, quietly; there was no venom in his voice, but he didn't sound particularly pleased with the idea.

"I dunno…I really wanted to be a hero when I was a kid, and I guess this is fine, but really, all we do right now is take down small-time villains at night in run-down junkyards, or people trying to escape from crimes through the sewer tunnels. Don'tcha think it's a little…same-y?"

"Same-y?"

"Yeah, like…doing the same thing over and over. I think the others just enjoy the freedom they have, but…I kinda wanna be free to do what _I_ want, y'know?" Izuku paused, watching his friend's face for any sign of a response, but as usual, there was none.

"Hm." Shouto didn't meet his eyes, watching the river by the road as it ran up its banks in a furious churn. "What do you want, Midoriya?"

"Well…ever since we were kids, we've been doing this dangerous stuff on the orders of someone we've never even met. I like Aizawa-sensei, but he always looks so…distant…when he comes back from the Sanctum, and he's still never answered me when I ask what this leader is like." The _Sanctum_ in this case referred to a deeper level of their hideout, one into which children were not allowed; Dabi had been down there before, but whatever he'd been doing, he'd told them that he was expressly forbidden to speak of it. "Plus, I know we never asked questions when we were little, but…don't you think it's really weird that he'd be sending out _kids_ on patrols looking for villains?"

"Always with an adult, though," Shouto countered. "It's like…a ride-along. Where a police trainee goes along with a police officer to see what it's actually like."

"Yeah, but they're all adults. I dunno, I just think it's a silly idea. Even if we've got strong Quirks, we were still kids…"

"I take no issue with it," his friend shrugged. "I'm glad I have the experience, and I'm glad I've gotten to do what's right."

"I mean, me too! But…I dunno." Shouto had picked up, a long while ago, that the higher the frequency with which Izuku said "I dunno", the closer he was to wrapping up his thoughts, and recently, it had started to disappoint Shouto just a little when he heard the phrase. Of everyone he'd met with the vigilantes – _the vigilantes_ , a general affiliation that held no real connections to preserve the identity and safety of those involved – Izuku was the only person whose voice he actually _liked_ listening to; the rest faded into the background, fodder for ambiance.

After a few minutes of silence, Shouto tried spurring him to speech once more.

"So you find something wrong with the structure of things," he suggested, and Izuku perked up, nodding.

"Yeah! That's it. I mean, most kids our age are just worried about school, but…on top of our lessons, how many times have we almost been killed? I'm…I'm glad you're away from that house, Shouto-kun, but don't you think you should have been given a normal childhood?"

"It doesn't bother me, honestly."

"…Why not?"

Raising his right hand up to his face, Shouto spread his fingers, watching ice crystallize between them. "It gave me a purpose other than being a runaway. I clung to that."

"…I understand that." In the distance, a faint rumble of thunder boomed across urban Tokyo, and the green-haired boy jumped. "But you know, we're not gonna be able to just take walks in the park once we start operating aboveground in the city in a few years."

"I know." Fingers twitched, and a thousand glittering prisms shattered.

"What if someone recognizes us?" Izuku pressed on, white-knuckled on the umbrella. "This…this isn't something I wanna lose, Shouto-kun. I wanna be able to walk through the park again." _With you,_ he added, mentally, and was relieved that Shouto didn't share his ability to read another's emotions.

"I know."

"…You're just gonna go along with it?"

"What other choice do I have?"

"We could run away again."

There was no response. Izuku threw his head back, pushing the umbrella out of the way, letting the rain fall on his face, soak his wild mop of a hairdo, cleanse the hurt he'd started to feel.

"We could be heroes for real, Shouto-kun."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" – and there was cold fury in his friend's voice now, but it thawed with every passing second – "I don't _want_ to be a hero. I don't want anything to _do_ with heroes. Where were any heroes when we needed them?"

Izuku recoiled from Shouto's snarl; it was rare for him to display so much emotion, and when he did, it was a sign that something had really, _really_ bothered him. "I'm sorry, I just – "

"You just _what_ , Midoriya?"

"…You've been listening to Shigarakkun again, haven't you?"

"Does it matter? I'd have come to this conclusion myself either way." Just as fast as he'd thawed, Shouto froze up again, leaving an icy silence in his wake.

For once, he didn't want to hear Izuku talk anymore.

"I just…want you to be there when I find _my_ purpose," Izuku finished, in a whisper, and choked on the beginnings of a sob.

Ahead of him, Shouto's back grew distant.


End file.
